I have yet to see the original Sinister, which, as a horror-movie fan, is difficult for me to admit out loud, especially because it was a sleeper hit that was, by most accounts, petrifying and fucked up in totally fresh ways. I’m sorry, okay? I was really busy writing the Deadpool screenplay in 2012.
But, just for you guys, I did something a horror-movie fan should never do: Read the Wikipedia summary of a horror movie before seeing it. So now I’m a) all scared at work (it’s raining really hard outside, too, which is helpful, and then Kate went and wrote about The Human Centipede) and b) Sinister is ruined for me forever and ever. But it’s okay. Now I can write about the new trailer for its upcoming sequel, Sinister 2, with flair and gravitas. Can you sense the gravitas yet? Well, you will.
My honorable predecessor Matt Singer first reported last year on the news of Sinister's sequel. He called the original “scary as hell” but “thoughtful,” a movie that was “largely about how and why we watch horror films.” I agree, after seeing it on Wikipedia. Sinister follows Ethan Hawke as a washed-up true-crime writer who moves his family into a house where another family was just brutally murdered. (Cool, Ethan Hawke.) There, he finds old 8mm films rife with horrible acts of violence, and, desperate to regain his relevance, starts to obsess over and analyze the films’ contents. Hilarity, I mean total demonic terror, ensues, and the movie concludes in a way that lends itself to a second chapter. (A Sinister Cinematic Universe, if you will.) (I won’t).
On Monday, Charles gave us a preview of Sinister 2’s preview, a 16-second look at the new trailer, which dropped in full today. I think its main message is clear: Don’t move your family into a murder-house (as helpfully illustrated by a newspaper article with the headline, “MORE FAMILIES MURDERED”).
The trail of the tape
Title: Sinister 2
Director: Ciaran Foy
Screenwriter: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Cast: Shannyn Sossamon, Tate Ellington, James Ransone, Dartanian Sloan, Robert Sloan
Release date: August 21, 2015
The entire trailer in one line of dialogue: “I don’t like it when you boys watch stuff like that before bed.”
The entire trailer in one screengrab:
Some of the original gang is back for this one—we’ve got Bughuul the demon (please hold your applause until the end), original writers Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, and some freaky dead children. But Ciaran Foy has taken the directorial reins from Derrickson, who was frightfully busy making Doctor Strange (I understand what it’s like to be busy working on Marvel properties, Scott), and there’s a new family ready to be dismantled, including the lovely and oft-underutilized Shannyn Sossamon and a pair of twins (Robert and Dartanian Sloan) thrown in for good measure. Which one is the cute one and which one is the one who will kill his entire family? TBD.